Sept. 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, September 10th, 2025 from I'm not sure where, but in China, Pepe Escobar joins us now. | |
| Pepe, a pleasure, my dear man. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Where did we find you, Pepe? | |
| Enormous pleasure, uh, Judge. | |
| I am in Sian, China, uh, the former imperial capital of Shangan. | |
| That was the start of the ancient Silk Road, which I'm going to retrace again. | |
| I wanted to do this uh years ago, but COVID intervened, so I'm doing it now. | |
| And the culture, yes, the contrast, Judge, between the dynamism all across China and all the horror stories that we have to put up with, especially in West Asia and across the West. | |
| It it's defies imagination. | |
| Wow. | |
| Uh a historic trip. | |
| I mean, before uh I ask you about the history you observed in the past 10 days uh at Vladivostok uh in uh Beijing and wherever else you were traveling, I must ask you about the events of the past 48 hours. | |
| The uh Israeli regime uh with the knowledge consent uh and help of the um Trump administration, um bombed a residential neighborhood in Doha, the capital of uh Qatar. | |
| The uh cutter uh air defenses and radar systems, which are operated by the United States, stood down, and these ten planes did their damage, they were refueled uh mid-air uh by the British Royal Air Force, and then they returned to their home bases uh in uh Israel. | |
| What all of this was an attempt to assassinate the Hamas negotiators uh who had immunity from this because they were participating in a negotiation, the negotiators were lured to their uh place of attempted assassination by the United States and by Israel. | |
| As far as we know, the assassinations were not uh successful. | |
| What is the international reaction to this monstrosity? | |
| Well, once again, uh, we have to go back to the warped logic of a death cult. | |
| They kill civilians, they kill uh diplomats, they kill negotiators, they kill uh health workers, they kill journalists. | |
| So in this case, they were killing negotiators in a sovereign in theory Arab nation with full complicity of the US. | |
| So in fact, once again, the US bombed itself, the so-called uh umbrella of protection over the Gulf Petrol monarchies. | |
| Now it has completely evaporated. | |
| If uh Israel can do this with Qatar, which is extremely pliable and was always extremely pliable vis-a-vis Israel. | |
| Tomorrow they can do this against MBZ in um uh in the Emirates. | |
| They can do this against the MBS in Saudi Arabia. | |
| So the Gulf Petrol monarchies, they have a lot of work to do to re-study the so-called uh American umbrella protection, which was a kind of a mafioso deal. | |
| This deal now it's over. | |
| Who who would negotiate with the Israelis or even with the Americans after this? | |
| I mean, by my count, this is the third time the US and the Israelis lured negotiators into a false sense of security only to try and kill them. | |
| They did this What did the did this with Nasserala in Lebanon? | |
| They did it with the uh Iranians uh and now uh with uh Hamas. | |
| Who would trust the Trump administration and who would who would be crazy enough to sit across a table from the Israelis? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Well, in terms of Israelis, uh, we can say the overwhelming majority of the planet. | |
| In the case of uh Trump 2.0, they already lost Eurasia, which is something that we saw last week in detail, and they are losing West Asia as well, especially the petromarchies. | |
| Uh, it was very, very easy for the petromonarchies for at least two decades. | |
| Uh, we had fires of hell raging in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Syria, but they were always protected, they were protected by the Americans, they were building their glitzy towers, they were bringing uh you know very, very wealthy tourists, and uh all that bling bling was very safe uh under the supposition that they were protected, they were never protected. | |
| And when Israel comes in in an out of control desk cult, which it is now, uh, in the past few months, they have been bombing literally everybody. | |
| There's no way out, and there's no diplomacy left. | |
| Uh and international law. | |
| Come on. | |
| You have this is there a uh maybe a year and a half ago, you had expressed the view that uh a resistance was growing on the Arab street, so to speak, and it was of such profound um uh in its sincerity that it would eventually reach uh the Arab governments. | |
| Do you still feel that way? | |
| Is there a resistance? | |
| Is it meaningful? | |
| Will it manifest itself in some military resistance, or is Netanyahu unstoppable? | |
| At the moment, uh, from a desk cult point of view, yes, he is unstoppable. | |
| In terms of uh the resistance in the Arab street, if you if you talk to people in a cafe in Cairo or in uh in a cafe in Amman, for instance, which are American protectorates, let's put it this way. | |
| Uh, we hear the same point of view that we hear in the spec in the spectrum of the axis of resistance. | |
| They totally understand what's going on in Gaza, they support Palestine as a whole. | |
| Uh, they know that this current uh incarnation of the death cult is uh the deadliest ever, and they are unstoppable. | |
| But the problem is this doesn't translate into their leadership in this country's Cisi or that little king in um in Amman or the petrol monarchies being forceful vis-a-vis Israel or or the US because they can they can do it, they simply can do it. | |
| They are too they are powerless, essentially. | |
| So this dichotomy between the street and the palace, sooner or later, we're gonna have to start revaluing it. | |
| The leaders are gonna start to reevaluate that. | |
| But what are they gonna do? | |
| Their weapons are Americans, their systems, their defense systems are America, their money is in the US or in London. | |
| There's nothing they can do about it, they are puppets. | |
| Uh, one last um observation I want from you before we get to uh Tianjin, Beijing and uh Vladabas talk, and that is a fascinating statement made this morning uh by Victor Orban uh about the future of the EU. | |
| Watch this, Chris Cut number 17. | |
| You know, it's gondoloman. | |
| I believe that the European Union has currently entered a state of fragmentation and disintegration. | |
| And if this continues, which is in fact the more likely scenario, then the history of the European Union will go down in history as the disappointing outcome of a noble experiment. | |
| Take into account that uh the fact that the French now have or will Soon have their fifth government uh in two years, the descending popularity of Prime Minister Stormer in Great Britain and Chancellor um Merz in Germany, where their numbers are down into the mid and high teens in the US, it would be impossible to govern with numbers that low, but they have a different system. | |
| Um add to that their drum beat, their fantastic drum beat in support uh of Ukraine. | |
| Where is Europe going? | |
| Well, the EU is already Orban is one of the very few EU leaders who knows from the inside, because he knows the absurdity of Brussels from the inside, and how it is collapsing, the whole institutional uh framework of the EU, and the nation states that are part of EU, they are crumbling as well. | |
| Today, judge, today is blockage day in France. | |
| There are blockades all over the place across France, and it's a citizen uh policy, in fact, and the people in all every region in France, from Bretagne in the north uh to uh Marseille uh uh in the south by the sea, they're saying the same thing. | |
| We can't stand this thing anymore, and this thing means uh that puppet in uh the LSA Palace, which is uh universally hated, his approval rate is actually less than 10 percent, the real approval rate, and there's nothing they can do about it. | |
| And for instance, uh a few months, a few a few weeks ago. | |
| I was in France, but not in Paris. | |
| When you go to Brittany or Normandy, for instance, and you talk to average people, then you feel the pulse uh of the Provence, as they say, the provinces, and this is this is the real France, and people can't stand it anymore. | |
| And at the same time, they say, look, we're this uh um there was a lot of talk about today, uh a few weeks ago about September 10. | |
| Let's paralyze the whole country on that and see if they understand the message. | |
| They don't. | |
| Macron would never understand the message. | |
| He appointed another idiot to be his next uh prime minister, and this government's gonna fall in between one or two months. | |
| Everybody knows that, yeah, but nothing changed. | |
| Yeah, the um Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, annual summit, the victory day parade in Beijing, the Eastern Economic Forum and Vladivostok, all of which you observed. | |
| How significant were these three events informing a new economic and security order and thumbing their noses at the West? | |
| That was the most important week, one of the most important weeks of this millennium for the global south and for Eurasia as a whole. | |
| When we analyze what happened in this uh practically we can we can say for four dates and happenings, the SEO in Tianjin, which came out with a very forceful declaration, and President Xi here in China openly uh proclaiming uh the necessity of a new global governance uh system. | |
| This is something that he has been saying for years. | |
| In Beijing, for instance, a few days ago, I bought I think his latest book, in fact, uh uh English translation. | |
| It's called The Modernization of China, a collection of uh speeches, excerpts from speeches, and he he started talking about global governance by 2015 or 16 already. | |
| So this is a mature process. | |
| Then the next day we had the one-on-one between Putin and Xi in Beijing as well, at the Zhong Hanai, which is the uh official residence of the presidency of China. | |
| So when you have a meeting like this in the Zhoganai, this is at the absolute top, and they discussed everything, not only their strategic partnership, but ahead, these multilateral organizations, SEO and BRICS, especially, and the leaders of both are everybody knows it, Russia and China. | |
| Then we Had the parade, which was a self-confident nation in front of Tiananmen Square. | |
| I wouldn't say showing off, but basically showing, look, we are strong, we can take care of ourselves. | |
| So it's better if anybody out there has ideas of confronting uh China. | |
| It's not gonna be like the century of uh humiliation in the in in the 19th century, and then we had business in Vladivostok, where we had Chinese South Koreans, people from all across Central Asia, from South Asia, from Southeast Asia. | |
| There was enormous delegations from Southeast Asia discussing business, and the most important, which is oil and energy from the point of view of the Arctic Russia, the Americans are interested, | |
| and connectivity corridors, and the most important one, which was defined by President Putin himself as the Trans Arctic Corridor, it's gonna be the Swiss canal of the 21st century, essentially, and this was discussed in detail in Vladivostok judge. | |
| I went to two round tables in Vladivostok, one of them was absolutely striking. | |
| We had, for instance, the head of Rosatom, the state uh nuclear uh and conglomerate in Russia, Likashev. | |
| Likashev is an excellent CEO. | |
| He gave a half an hour breakdown of everything that they plan to accomplish with this new connectivity corridor and the challenges as well. | |
| And we need to find the money. | |
| It's not only the federal uh federal funds uh from Moscow uh provincial funds, but we need investors as well. | |
| But this is uh can you imagine a project of this breast and scope, which is a project of national interest uh for Russia as well, national security? | |
| It's equivalent to what the Chinese did in starting in the end of the millennium. | |
| At the time they used to call it go west, which is to develop uh Tibetan Sinjiang. | |
| That's where I'm going next. | |
| In fact, I remember at the time and my previous trips to Xinjiang, you can see you could see it building. | |
| I my friends, my Chinese friends are telling me you have no idea what you're gonna see now in terms of the development of Qingosing. | |
| Was the um decision by President Trump to impose 50 percent uh secondary tariffs in India, sort of the last straw that uh produced those remarkable pictures uh of Modi, Putin and G embracing, smiling, making happy eye contact uh with each other. | |
| It was the last straw, Judge. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Um, in fact, uh, our Chinese friends, for instance, uh, I remember some excellent discussions with Chinese academics during the BRICS in Rio, which was uh not a long time ago, was in early uh early July. | |
| Now, for instance, on Monday, we had another dinner here with some top class scholars and academics, and they say, Yes, it's true that there was a sentiment here in uh Beijing of uh lack of trust between China and India. | |
| This is changing after the SEO, after putting Xi and Modi together, after the fact that Maudi actually went came here to China uh as an honored guest, but would also defend uh Indian national interest, but Eurasia interest as a whole. | |
| So the Chinese uh uh the China-Indian relationship relationship changed completely last week, and of course, our friend Donald was instrumental. | |
| Wow. | |
| What is the um where is the second largest bank in the world? | |
| I think the end I know the answer because you told me already, but I think the answer will surprise people watching us now. | |
| Spare bank from Russia, absolutely, and in one of the panels that we were in Vladivostok, the CEO of Sperbank, Herman Graft was there, and he said that. | |
| I If I'm remember correctly, was the first time that he actually said that uh in public that the second largest bank in terms of uh transactions in the world is Spare Bank, it is larger than every American bank except for Chase, except JP Morgan. | |
| Wow. | |
| This no, this is you know, but but spare bank is uh it's a behemov, in fact, and it's respected in the by by the international banking system, financial community, etc. | |
| Does the do Moscow, Beijing or New Delhi need SWIFT? | |
| Do they need the American banking system? | |
| Do they need the dollar any longer? | |
| No, they don't, and they uh and this is what these uh I call them lab experiments inside BRICS. | |
| This is what they are working on. | |
| So when you hear our friend uh Grandmaster Lavrov saying that uh we are uh he never he never mentions de dollarization, he always says we are increasing a trade uh among us uh with our national currencies. | |
| This is exactly what Russia and China are doing. | |
| Now it's over 90 percent in yuan and rubles. | |
| So this is going to go all around the the 10 Eurasia uh the 10 sorry, the 10 Eurasia members of the SCO, the 10 BRICS members, and the partners, the BRICS partners and the SEO partners as well. | |
| So this is where we're going. | |
| They are flowing in parallel, these two multilateral organizations, BRICS and SEO. | |
| BRICS, of course, is more geared towards uh geo economics, and there's a geopolitical aspect that's very important. | |
| The SEO started as security and now is going towards geoeconomics as well, and soon we're gonna have on the table on the SCO very similar proposals that we see on the table with when BRICS get uh get together. | |
| Will BRICS and SCO eventually emerge and become the same thing? | |
| An economic, political, military cooperative. | |
| Judge, we could we should ask this question to uh somebody that Donald Trump deeply admires, Lukashenko. | |
| Lukashenko said that last year, eventually BRICS and SEO will merge, and it makes logically it makes total sense, especially because the top four on both uh Russia, China, India, and Iran. | |
| Iran uh it's more complicated because uh we can say Indonesia in BRICS, Indonesia it's is the very important I the new I in BRICS is Indonesia, much more Iran, of course, because Iran is under attack by the West still, but these four are on both, and the Central Asians, some of them are part of BRICS. | |
| We have two Central Asians as BRICS partners, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the two most important of the Central Asian stats, and Southeast Asia, they are partners of SEO, and some are partners of BRICS as well, like Thailand and Malaysia, for instance. | |
| So they are merging, and what they discussed in the summits and what they discussed at the level of their uh foreign ministry, which are now talking all the time, and that included uh on Monday this extraordinary summit of BRICS, which was called by uh President Lula from Brazil, there was nothing spectacular. | |
| Uh we could even say that was relatively lame, basically saying what all of us already know, but there's there's a twist. | |
| What President Putin said during this extraordinary summit, the Kremlin said no, we're not going to have it released. | |
| Apparently, it was something really groundbreaking. | |
| Nobody knows what it was. | |
| This is a secret for the moment. | |
| But Putin probably relayed a very important message to his BRICS partners, and obviously related to the current wobbly negotiations between uh Moscow and Washington, and of course, the tariff war, because the BRICS. | |
| Uh, when you learn what this is, that President Putin said, I hope we'll be uh the first people that you reach out to, of course. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| This this stuff is so fascinating, it keeps getting more and more fascinating. | |
| Where will you be when we reach you next week? | |
| Wow. | |
| Okay, the short version is uh middle of next week. | |
| I'll be uh between Dun Huang and Ya Yuguan, which is the end of uh the old Great Wall. | |
| Because I'm I'm I'm traveling west. | |
| I'm following the old Silk Roads. | |
| They started here in Siang, and I'm going all the way to the China Pakistani border, which is a trip that I did many times before. | |
| But this is the let's say the post-COVID uh Sol Bricks trip to the West of China to see how China developed the West. | |
| Let's not only this past five, this past ten years, especially. | |
| Wow, fascinating. | |
| Yeah, it's fascinating. | |
| It is it is please uh please reach us if you have uh breaking news. | |
| Otherwise, we'll see you at your usual time next week, and we deeply look forward to it. | |
| Thank you so much, Pepe for what you're doing. | |
| Thank you so much, greetings from Sian. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Be well, safe travels, my friend. | |
| Wow, what a uh what an experience. |
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